Concerns with Solar PV Panels
Camilla: Easy there, Michael. Landfills have definitely come a long way to Solar PV Panels. Let’s take a look at this. The production of biogas from landfills is dependent on something called anaerobic digestion. This means that microorganisms are used in an oxygen free environment, to digest large organic molecules and eventually produce methane gas and carbon dioxide. Methane is the main constituent of natural gas. So, in a lot of ways, biogas is very similar to natural gas.
Mike Lavelle: Walker and AbitibiBowater have made a unique partnership to try and reduce their carbon footprint. They have basically harvested biogas from the landfill, piped it across the street where the gas is used in the process of recycling newspaper from your blue bin.
Man 1: We initially called Abitibi and there wasn’t much interest. They were concerned about Solar PV Panels and the whole issue of burning landfill gas and I think over a period of years we persuaded them that this had been done on many occasions in other jurisdictions, especially in the US and that it was quite safe to burn landfill gas in their boilers.
